Highest Aspirations Ellevation Education

Welcome back to Highest Aspirations, an education podcast focused on providing educators with inspiration and strategies to help multilingual learners achieve their highest aspirations. In this episode, our interview is conducted by Sandra Medrano-Arroya, Ellevation’s National Director of Multilingual Learner Success, who speaks with Sofía Núñez of Empower the Voice. They leverage their vast collective experience as multilingual learner professionals to provide valuable insights on: 


Partnering with families of our English learners to close learning gaps in the classroom and creating more inclusive environments by bridging the language and culture gap


They also lay out three specific focus areas for fostering parent engagement and advocacy



Sofía Núñez is an energetic, committed education leader, public speaker and consultant. She is the founder and CEO of Empower the Voice, a non-profit focusing on increasing opportunities for Hispanic students through empowering families to participate in leadership, language acquisition and the transition to college and career. With over 12 years of experience in education, Núñez served school districts in multiple capacities. Her passion to support and empower families is evident in the programs she has directed, including parent workshops, English as a Second Language classes for adults, citizenship preparation, GED (Education  & computer literacy programs for families, and the creation of parent advisory committees, amongst others. She believes in the power of building dual-capacity and provides professional development for teachers, helping them implement transformative family engagement practices.

Click here to download the full episode ⁠transcript⁠ and visit our ⁠EL Community page⁠ for more resources.


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Welcome back to Highest Aspirations, an education podcast focused on providing educators with inspiration and strategies to help multilingual learners achieve their highest aspirations. In this episode, we zoom out some to talk about what happens after multilingual learners and other students from marginalized communities leave K-12 schools and what we can do to ensure they are equipped to rewatch their highest aspirations.

Our guest David Nungaray and I talk about…


What the data says about economic and social mobility of students from historically marginalized communities


How we can help improve outcomes and long-term trajectories of students from historically marginalized communities, including multilingual learners


And how we can we leverage the linguistic and cultural assets MLs bring to better our communities while simultaneously working to close wealth gaps



For the full episode transcript, click here. For additional resources and to find information about the 2024 Ellevation Scholarship that is now open, visit our EL Community blog.

David Nungaray is the Bilingual Consulting Partner at TNTP. Currently, David oversees partnerships in Alaska, California, Nevada, and Texas. He also supports TNTP’s multilingual strategy across the country. David has led teams focused on partnering with districts through strategic planning, (bi)literacy visioning and implementation, dual language supports, stakeholder and family engagement, high-impact tutoring, learning acceleration, and state-wide high-quality instructional materials adoption. Prior to his time at TNTP, David served as the principal of one of the flagship dual language schools in San Antonio ISD. He first began his career as a dual language teacher and has led work in bilingual education for over a decade. As a son of immigrants, native Spanish speaker, and a first-generation college graduate, David is passionate about educational equity and to ensuring school systems best meet the needs of all learners. David is also an alum of Teach For America. He serves on multiple non-profit boards focused on education, and he holds his Masters in School Leadership from Trinity University, where he has served as an adjunct professor in multilingual education, school leadership, and special education. He also recently co-authored a chapter in "Breaking Down the Monolingual Wall" that speaks to essential shifts needed in leadership to support multilingual learners. 


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In this week's episode, we're looking closely at teaching and learning academic language with our friends Diane Staehr Fenner and Sydney Snyder. We discuss the need to bring in sociocultural context and background knowledge that our students bring with them. We also get into how we can avoid taking a one-size-fits-all approach and personalize learning to accelerate learning. Of course, Diane and Sydney also share some simple and effective strategies from their book Unlocking Multilingual Learners' Potential: Strategies for Making Content Accessible and Culturally Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners: Tools for Equity. that you can use right away.



You can download the full episode transcript here, and visit our EL Community blog for additional free resources on EL education.



Diane Staehr Fenner, Ph.D., is the author of eight books on multilingual learner education, including the co-author of Unlocking Multilingual Learners' Potential: Strategies for Making Content Accessible and Culturally Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners: Tools for Equity (2nd ed.). She is a former ELD teacher and the founder and president of SupportEd, a woman-owned small business that provides professional development, technical assistance, and curriculum support to empower MLs and their educators. You can reach her at Diane@SupportEd.com or on social media at @DStaehrFenner.

Sydney Snyder, Ph.D., is the co-author of Unlocking Multilingual Learners' Potential: Strategies for Making Content Accessible and Culturally Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners: Tools for Equity. She is a Principal Associate at SupportEd. In this role, she provides professional development, coaching, and technical assistance to educators framed around advocacy and educational equity for multilingual learners and their families. You can connect with her at Sydney@SupportEd.com or on X at @SydneySupportEd.


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What are the primary challenges EL families are facing in their communities and how can programs like FLI address them? How did COVID and other recent challenges in the education world impact absenteeism for students, and how can those issues be repaired? How can we support parents and families to address trauma they have experienced in order to improve their relationships with and outcomes for their children? We discuss these family engagement focused topics and more on this episode of Highest Aspirations featuring Consuelo Castillo Kickbusch and the work her team does through her Family Leadership Institute (FLI).

Born and raised in a small, borderside barrio of Laredo, Texas, Consuelo Castillo Kickbusch conquered the challenges of poverty, discrimination and illiteracy. Raised without material wealth, Consuelo learned from her immigrant parents that their wealth was in culture, tradition, values, and faith. The values Consuelo learned as a child were reinforced throughout her career in the United States military. After graduating from Hardin Simmons University, Consuelo entered the U.S. Army as an officer and served for two decades. During that time, she broke barriers and set records when she became the highest-ranking Mexican-American woman in the Combat Support Field of the U.S. Army. When selected to assume a command post, Consuelo disrupted her advancement by deciding to retire. She chose instead to honor her mother’s dying wish – for her to return to her roots and become

a community leader. In 1996, Consuelo Castillo Kickbusch founded the human development company, Educational Achievement Services, Inc. (EAS, Inc.), to fulfill her mission of preparing tomorrow’s leaders through grassroots leadership development. Consuelo Kickbusch affirms that her greatest achievement stems from motherhood. She loves spending time with her husband, five daughters and six grandchildren.










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On this episode of Highest Aspirations, we explore the importance of building personalized professional learning opportunities that provide educators with opportunities to continuously reflect on their work. Our guests Shélynn (Shey) Riel and Anna Ciriani-Dean provide simple frameworks within an experiential learning cycle designed to improve instruction and reframe negative self-criticism into more constructive, actionable feedback. 

Shey and Anna produce and host the Teacher The Teacher Think-Aloud Podcast to create a reflective listening experience for teachers of the English language and to build a community of educators around the world who unite behind a shared fervor for teaching and learning.

Shélynn (Shey) Riel holds a Master of Education in TESOL and over fifteen years of experience in education. Alongside her work as co-host of The Teacher Think-Aloud Podcast, Shey works with Bridge Education as the Expert Series Webinar Moderator, facilitating live monthly webinars that bring together ELT experts to share insights and perspectives on the latest industry trends. Shey has held positions of leadership in curriculum development and program administration at universities and non-profits in the U.S., served as a facilitator for various digital exchanges for global English teachers, and delivered professional development to teachers on the ground in Argentina and Bangladesh. She adopts a holistic approach to education, emphasizing balanced environments for learning and reflection. Beyond the podcast, Anna works as a Learning & Development Coordinator for English Language Programs, a program of the U.S. Department of State, where she develops orientations and professional development courses on specialized topics in English language teaching for participants in teaching exchange programs worldwide. She holds an M.A. in Applied Linguistics and has worked within the field of English language education, abroad and in the U.S., for over 12 years as a teacher, assessment specialist, curriculum designer, program manager, and instructional designer. Her goal as an educator is to empower learners by giving them agency in their learning process and providing them with the tools they need to excel in their academic, professional, and personal lives.



For episode resources and more, visit our EL Community blog. Download the full episode transcript here.


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On this episode of Highest Aspirations, we take a deep dive into how professional learning can help create and nurture the skillsets and the mindsets educators need to best serve multilingual learners. We challenge the often idealized assumption that “every teacher is a teacher of language” and explore ways to make that a reality rather than a desired state. We also talk about how effective leadership be used as a means to overcome issues teachers are facing like fatigue, burnout, and working in silos. Finally, we highlight some ways schools can leverage partnerships within the community to navigate teacher shortages and build their diverse educator pipeline.

To help us address some of these complicated topics, we brought in Dr. Sarah Schmidt de Carranza. Sarah has been has been an educator in Saint Paul Public Schools since 2003. She achieved National Board Certification in Teaching English as a New Language in 2009, and successfully re-certified in 2019. She joined the Saint Paul Public Schools Office of Multilingual Learning as a supervising administrator in 2019, and has served as the Executive Director of the Office of Multilingual Learning since 2021. 

For additional free resources, episode takeaways, and more, visit ⁠our blog.⁠ Download the ⁠full episode transcript here.


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